In three tiered
bunks, or hutches, there were at times 9–12 persons on each level, especially
during the arrival of the Hungarian Jewish transports in the Spring and Summer
of 1944. The bunks were about 3 meters wide. If prisoners wanted to turn, the
whole row had to turn over with them. BIIa had only one row of barracks. Most
of the other sub-camps, BIIb-e, had two rows.

These barracks
were actually prefabricated wooden stables (Pferdestallbaracken, OKH-Typ 260/9),
originally intended for use on the Eastern Front in Russia. They had rings attached
to the walls for tying horses. There were 153 of these barracks in BII, the
men's camp, and the camp hospital, not including toilet and washing barracks.
The three deck hutches were originally intended to hold 15 prisoners, the total
population about 400. In reality the number of prisoners in each barrack varied
according to the size and number of arriving transports. In May-June of 1944
the Quarantine barracks could hold as many as 2,000 prisoners each. The long
brick structure is part of an oven at each end, supposedly to radiate heat.

See painting by
Auschwitz and Birkenau survivor, the late Mieczyslaw Koscielniak at [link].
The last two stalls were used to store buckets for excrement as there was no
running water.

Survivor/author
Tadeusz Borowski wrote: "If the barracks walls were suddenly to fall away,
many thousands of people, packed together, squeezed tightly in their bunks,
would remain suspended in mid-air. Such a sight would be more gruesome than
the medieval paintings of the Last Judgment. For one of the ugliest sights to
a man is that of another man sleeping on his tiny portion of the bunk, of the
space he must occupy, because he has a body - a body that has been exploited
to the utmost: with a number tattooed to save on dog tags, with just enough
sleep at night to work during the day, and just enough time to eat. And just
enough food so that he will not die wastefully. As for actual living, there
is only one place for it - a piece of bunk. The rest belongs to the camp, to
the fatherland"*

*Borowski, T. 1967.
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans. Barbara Vedder. New York:
Viking. p.110f.